When it comes to additional modes,Call of Duty: Warzonehas often kept things pretty similar to its core battle royale formula. For instance,Warzone’s beloved Rebirth Island modeis essentially justWarzone’s battle royale mode, but on a much smaller scale, and with some slight tweaks to mechanics.Call of Duty: Warzone 2, however, has launched with an additional mode that’s a little more complex than any of its predecessors.
Called DMZ,Call of Duty: Warzone 2’s additional mode is a PvPvE experience that’s heavily inspired byEscape From Tarkovand other games like it. While it uses the same map asWarzone 2’s main mode, and retains a lot of the same core mechanics, DMZ’s objectives are completely different and offer something entirely new fortheCall of Dutyfranchise. However, it isn’t perfect, andWarzone 2’s DMZ mode really needs to double down on its challenges if it wants to stay relevant.
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Warzone 2.0’s DMZ Mode Needs to Keep Delivering More Challenges
Currently in Beta,Call of Duty: Warzone 2’s DMZ mode drops players into a specific area of the game’s new Al Mazrah map. From here, players will need to search the environment carefully for weapons, gear, and valuable loot. As opposed toWarzone 2’s core game mode, there’s much more of an emphasis on loot here, with players being tasked with gathering the most valuable loot possible, reaching an extraction zone, and exfiltrating successfully.
Along the way, players will come into contact with a range of different AI enemies, some of which will go down within a shot or two, while others will take some serious firepower and strategy to defeat. The harder the AI, the better the loot will be. Players may also encounter other human foes, though with only 66 players in a match, the odds of meeting them are much lower than inWarzone 2’s main game mode.
This makesWarzone 2’s DMZ mode a bit of a double-edged sword. While the prevalence of AI enemies acts as the perfect introduction toWarzonefor new players, veteranWarzoneplayers may get a little bored with the more simplistic enemy encounters. And when compared to even the most difficult AI foes, human enemies will always be more engaging to fight. With fewer human players in the game, human encounters are just less frequent, and that can lead to some stale firefights. On top of that,DMZ’s general gameplay loopcan also get a little frustrating if players are repeatedly killed during the extraction phase, as the penalty for losing a match can be quite high, with players losing any Contraband weapons they brought in with them.
However,Warzone 2’s DMZ mode has a great way to combat player frustrations and boredom. Before every match, players can choose three different sets of challenges to work towards. While DMZ naturally grants players a range of rewards if they manage to successfully extract valuable loot, these challenges reward players greatly for just completing each objective. These challenges can reward players withBattle Pass Tier Skips, weapon blueprints, and a range of cosmetics, which all act as incentives to keep players glued to DMZ. If Infinity Ward wants to keep players coming back to DMZ, then it needs to ensure that it’s releasing these challenges at a consistent rate, and it needs to verify that the rewards attached to them are worth logging in for.
Call of Duty: Warzone 2is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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